GaWsh:
Still wasting air, eh? Well, kicking you around the block was fun and you did deserve all of it. As expected it was also unproductive. I read with interest your comments about ‘get over it’ and ‘live with it’. I gotta hand it to you, you got balls to admit to such antisocial behavior. But as I mentioned you seem reasonable on other issues, so there might be hope for you yet.
So, all fun and kidding aside, now it’s time to get really dirty and dredge up some facts. Please keep in mind that these are not opinions, these are the results from field tests and clinical trials. Details are at the bottom of the post, but the short version is:
- Noise is a physiological stressor and produces aggrevation, increased hostility and aggressiveness, reduced tendency to help a person in need, reduced cooperation, and is a major factor in the dehumanization of urban environments.
- Prolonged exposure to noisy environments can lead to both temporary and apparently permanent health effects including adverse effects on cardiovascular disease and fetal health.
- Noise adversely affects performance of complex or cognitive tasks such as reading or learning.
- Noise increases the use of drugs and mental illness on average in the affected population.
- Noise interrupts sleep which is needed for physical and mental health. After effects last well into the next day.
- Noise (particularly in the mid frequency ranges) interferes with speech and particularly victimzes the hard of hearing.
- Noise affects children, the ill, the elderly, and disabled people the most.
After the ass reaming I gave you, I’m not expecting a response above the ‘get jacked’ level. However, these are the facts. What you are doing is no different than if you were driving around a 1963 shitmobile puking out clouds of blue smoke and telling everyone to ‘breathe some other air, not my problem’.
[http://www.who.int/peh/noise/ComnoiseExec.htm]
-Speech intelligibility in everyday living conditions is influenced by speech level; speech pronunciation; talker-to-listener distance; sound level and other characteristics of the interfering noise; hearing acuity…For full sentence intelligibility in listeners with normal hearing, the signal-to-noise ratio … should be at least 15 dB(A). Since the sound pressure level of normal speech is about 50 dB(A), noise with sound levels of 35 dB(A) or more interferes with the intelligibility of speech in smaller rooms. For vulnerable groups even lower background levels are needed, and a reverberation time below 0.6 s is desirable for adequate speech intelligibility, even in a quiet environment… The inability to understand speech results in a large number of personal handicaps and behavioural changes. Particularly vulnerable are the hearing impaired, the elderly, children in the process of language and reading acquisition, and individuals who are not familiar with the spoken language.
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Uninterrupted sleep is a prerequisite for good physiological and mental functioning, and the primary effects of sleep disturbance are: difficulty in falling asleep; awakenings and alterations of sleep stages or depth; increased blood pressure, heart rate and finger pulse amplitude; vasoconstriction; changes in respiration; cardiac arrhythmia; and increased body movements. The difference between the sound levels of a noise event and background sound levels, rather than the absolute noise level, may determine the reaction probability. The probability of being awakened increases with the number of noise events per night. The secondary, or after-effects, the following morning or day(s) are: reduced perceived sleep quality; increased fatigue; depressed mood or well-being; and decreased performance. For a good night’s sleep, the equivalent sound level should not exceed 30 dB(A) for continuous background noise, and individual noise events exceeding 45 dB(A) should be avoided. In setting limits for single night-time noise exposures, the intermittent character of the noise has to be taken into account. This can be achieved, for example, by measuring the number of noise events, as well as the difference between the maximum sound level and the background sound level. Special attention should also be given to: noise sources in an environment with low background sound levels; combinations of noise and vibrations; and to noise sources with low-frequency components.
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In workers exposed to noise, and in people living near airports, industries and noisy streets, noise exposure may have a large temporary, as well as permanent, impact on physiological functions. After prolonged exposure, susceptible individuals in the general population may develop permanent effects, such as hypertension and ischaemic heart disease associated with exposure to high sound levels… Sounds also evoke reflex responses, particularly when they are unfamiliar and have a sudden onset.
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environmental noise is not believed to cause mental illness directly, but… studies on the use of drugs such as tranquillizers and sleeping pills, on psychiatric symptoms and on mental hospital admission rates, suggest that community noise may have adverse effects on mental health.
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It has been shown, mainly in workers and children, that noise can adversely affect performance of cognitive tasks… cognitive performance substantially deteriorates for more complex tasks. Reading, attention, problem solving and memorization are among the cognitive effects most strongly affected by noise.
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Noise can produce a number of social and behavioural effects as well as annoyance… The correlation between noise exposure and general annoyance is much higher at group level than at individual level. Noise above 80 dB(A) may also reduce helping behaviour and increase aggressive behaviour.
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Examples of vulnerable subgroups are: people with particular diseases or medical problems (e.g. high blood pressure); people in hospitals or rehabilitating at home; people dealing with complex cognitive tasks; the blind; people with hearing impairment; fetuses, babies and young children; and the elderly in general. People with impaired hearing are the most adversely affected with respect to speech intelligibility.
[http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1998/106-5/forum.html]
…researchers at… the University College London Medical School Stansfeld identifies nine key groups of health effects believed to be influenced by noise: sleep disturbances, performance
problems, cardiovascular disease, fetal health, endocrine responses, psychiatric disorders, annoyance, children’s health effects, and health effects due to noise in combination with other stressors.
[http://www.nonoise.org/library/suter/suter.htm]
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Impulsive or other sudden loud sounds can produce a startle response that does not completely habituate with repeated, predictable exposures (May and Rice, 1971).
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Simple tasks remain unaffected at noise levels as high as 115 dB or above, while more complex tasks are disrupted at much lower levels… Effects on serial reaction tasks have been noted for continuous noise with C- weighted noise levels of 90 dB (Jones, 1983) and for intermittent noise with C-weighted levels of around 80 dB (Lahtela et al., 1986)… and impulse noise may be even more disruptive.
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It seems that noise can have even greater effects after than during exposure. The most common after-effect appearing in the experimental literature is a reduced tolerance for frustration, manifested in a series of experiments as a reduction in willingness to persist in trying to solve insoluble puzzles (Glass and Singer, 1972; Percival and Loeb, 1980). This research also indicates
that predictability of the noise signal greatly reduces its adverse after-effects (Glass and Singer, 1972). -
There is an extensive literature concerning the effect of noise on social behavior… Matthews and Cannon (1975) found that fewer subjects there willing to help someone who had “accidentally” dropped materials when background noise levels there 85 dB than when they there 65 dB. In a
subsequent field study, the same results there demonstrated in a background of lawn mower noise, and this time the addition of a cast on the “victim’s” arm enhanced helping behavior under quiet conditions, but failed to do so during the noise episodes… Broadbent (1979 and 1983) cites additional evidence suggesting that subjects will give each other increased amounts of shock and noise when they themselves are exposed to noise, and also cites evidence that noise increases anxiety levels (Broadbent, 1983)… These effects may, to some extent, help explain the “dehumanization” of today’s urban environment. -
Noise is considered a nonspecific biological stressor, eliciting a response that prepares the body for action, sometimes referred to as the “fight or flight” response. The physiological mechanism thought to be responsible for this reaction is the stimulation by noise (via the auditory system) of the brain’s reticular activating system (Cohen, 1977). Neural impulses spread
from the reticular system to the higher cortex and throughout the central nervous system. Noise can, therefore, influence perceptual, motor, and cognitive behavior, and also trigger glandular, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal changes by means of the autonomic nervous system. -
Rehm (1983) found a significant correlation between noise annoyance and cardiovascular
disorders. Her data also suggest that those with existing health problems are more annoyed by environmental factors, such as noise. Similarly, Rovekamp (1983) found that subjects who described themselves as sensitive to noise showed significantly greater noise-induced increases in peripheral vasoconstriction than their “normal” counterparts. -
As a biological stressor, noise can influence the entire physiological system. Most effects appear to be transitory, but with continued exposure some effects have been shown to be chronic in laboratory animals. Probably the strongest evidence lies in the cardiovascular effects.
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Factors directly affecting annoyance from noise include interference with communication and sleep disturbance, which have been discussed in earlier sections. Other less direct effects are disruption of one’s peace of mind, the enjoyment of one’s property, and the enjoyment of solitude. The consequences of noise-induced annoyance are privately felt dissatisfaction, publicly expressed complaints to authorities, and potential adverse health effects, as
suggested above… It should be clear, however, that annoyance can connote more than a slight irritation; it can mean a significant degradation in the quality of life.
Other references:
[http://www.kdefe.com/articles/guidelin.htm]
[http://www.wa.gov/ecology/sea/pac/handbook/low/chap12.html]
[http://www.uwcm.ac.uk/uwcm/lb/pep/healthyenvironments/Chapter3.html]
[http://www.vml.ucl.ac.uk/links/vmlweb/info/ilo/research/pan/]
[http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/global/sensem/S98/Nunez/Noise.html]
[http://www.lhh.org/noise/facts/health.htm]
[http://www.aap.org/policy/re9728.html]
[http://www.hacan.org.uk/proofs/hac61.htm]
[http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/phys_agents/non_auditory.html]
[http://www.szu.cz/chzp/rep97/ak98_06.htm]
